Piracy defeated

In a victory against filesharing, sites have been blocked:

Big UK net firms have begun blocking access to two sites accused of flouting copyright laws.

The blocks were imposed after the Motion Picture Association (MPA) won a court order compelling ISPs to cut off the Movie2K and Download4All websites.

Yeah, that'll work. It's not like they'll just g...

However, pro-piracy activists have set up a copy of the Movie2K website in a bid to get around the restrictions.

Damn you, pirates. Couldn't you at least let me finish my cynical 'they'll just move it somewhere else' sentence before you just move it somewhere else.

Still, it's a major victory. People will now know about Movies2K and their giving away of movies for free, right?

That is what you wanted, copyright industry, right?

Here's the Google report on search volumes for terms related to Movies2K - the solid line is based on data, the dotted line Google's expectation of what happens next; it's a relative chart so the top is 100.

As you can see, searching for movies2K had been falling over the year so far - but the intervention of the MPA has really turned that frown upside down for the pirates.

Well done, everybody. Even King Pyrrhus is thinking you've reset the bar for empty victories.

(By the way, don't you love the way the MPAA drops the second A when it goes on foreign trips?)

Copyright industry threaten to cut Google off from internet

Here's why sending automated letters to unlicensed file sharers is a terrible thing to do.

the MPAA have sent Google letters claiming that employees are sharing movies, and warning:

“Copyright infringement also violates your ISP’s terms of service and could lead to limitation or suspension of your Internet service. You should take immediate action to prevent your Internet account from being used for illegal activities,” the movie companies write in various letters.

Google's ISP might decide to cut it off. Losing the revenue from - what, they must have, like three dial-up accounts at the very least?

The more the copyright industry churn out things like this, which makes it clear there's not even a poorly-paid person checking on the claims they're making, the more they undermine their genuine concerns.

When copyright rules, towns fall off the net

Here we are, worrying about what would happen if the record labels forced a household off the internet. In Ohio, an entire town has been disconnected at the behest of Sony Pictures. Because one user of the muncipal wi-fi allegedly downloaded a movie.

[via Boing Boing]

David Lammy goes Hollywood

As if Mandelson not-saying-anything-on-that-yacht wasn't shaming enough, this week has also seen the pitiable sight of David Lammy telling the MPAA that the UK government sees its job as protecting multinational paid-for copyrights ahead of the needs of British people or culture. Billboard reports on his trip to Washington:

Lammy said that he favors "freedom" but stressed that it didn't mean free, and he called for more effective law enforcement as well as cooperation between the U.K. and U.S.

He said that the new option to suspend accounts was proof that the government is "not standing still" on the issue of P2P.

Lammy said that "new work against illicit P2P file-sharing, including possible suspension of Internet access for persistent infringers" showed that government is "sending a clear message: when it comes to piracy and infringement, 'digital is not different.'"

But digital is different, David. If it wasn't, you wouldn't need to be coming up with new rules, would you?

"Partnership and innovation by businesses can help consumers understand the problems illegal downloads cause creators and performers, giving them the knowledge and confidence they need to act within the law," said Lammy. "If we provide the right combination of enforcement, education and forward-looking policy we can build a culture that provides consumers with legitimate access to the content they want."

Consumers need confidence to act within the law? Did you read your speech back before you delivered it, David? And if you did, when you got to that point, did you have a picture of what these consumers - too anxious to operate within the law - firmly in your mind? Hovering around the entrance to the iTunes store afeared of what might happen?

You really believe there is a significant number of people who are using bittorrent because they're not confident about the licensed option?

Lammy also commented on the complexity surrounding licensing and rights clearance for digital services, insisting that it needs to change.

"The conclusion is obvious - clear and simple systems for rights clearance and permission will benefit everyone," he said.

Well, that's good - although that obvious conclusion seems to have dropped off the bit of paperwork where the Treasury shouts and proposes its throwing weight around.

Evidence? That's for little people, says MPAA

In a submission in the Jammie Thomas case, the MPAA has suggested to the judge that they don't really need to prove anything:

"Mandating such proof could thus have the pernicious effect of depriving copyright owners of a practical remedy against massive copyright infringement in many instances," MPAA attorney Marie L. van Uitert wrote Friday to the federal judge overseeing the Jammie Thomas trial.

"It is often very difficult, and in some cases, impossible, to provide such direct proof when confronting modern forms of copyright infringement, whether over P2P networks or otherwise; understandably, copyright infringers typically do not keep records of infringement," van Uitert wrote on behalf of the movie studios, a position shared with the Recording Industry Association of America, which sued Thomas, the single mother of two.

It is impossible to prove we were damaged, so we should not have to prove that any copyright theft took place. It's wonderful logic and we look forward to this forming a cornerstone of law in future. After all, it's difficult to prove that Marie van Uitert has been brainwashing my cat in order to turn it into a killing machine, but - hey - that need not be a problem any more, need it?

Grant our invisibility cloak immunity, begs RIAA

In the wake of the HP case last year - where the printer ink company was caught pretending to be someone else to sneak out phone records of journos and board members - California has been planning to strengthen the law on pretexting. The state thinks that if you want to know something, you should be honest about who you are and why you're doing it.

Fair enough, right?

Not quite - the record and movie industry are wailing that they need to be exempt:

But the Recording Industry Assn. of America and the Motion Picture Assn. of America say they sometimes need to use subterfuge as they pursue bootleggers in flea markets and on the Internet.

In recent letters to state Sen. Ellen Corbett (D-San Leandro), the trade groups said the proposed legislation was written too broadly and could undermine anti-piracy efforts. They said investigators sometimes pose as someone else to obtain bootlegged CDs or movies and to break into online piracy rings.

"Basically, we want criminals to feel comfortable that who they're dealing with is probably some other criminal and let us in on what's going on," said Brad Buckles, the RIAA's executive vice president for anti-piracy. "We're not talking about trying to go in and get customer information. In no case have we ever tried to do that."

The RIAA proposed changes to the piracy bill that raised alarms among consumer advocates. The trade group asked that any owner of a copyright, patent, trademark or trade secret be able to use "pretexting or other investigative techniques to obtain personal information about a customer or employee" when seeking to enforce intellectual property rights.

Hmm... the music industry has never attempted to pretend to be someone else in order to winkle out customer information, eh? Isn't that exactly what they were doing when they were breaching the terms of service on file sharing network a few years back? And if it's not about investigating customers, then why does their requested version of the law expressly give them the right to, erm, investigate customers?

The other important thing, of course, is that the RIAA is not dealing with "criminals" at all - it's dealing with suspects. And if it really does believe crimes are being committed - even the ridiculous non-crimes its managed to get onto US statute books - shouldn't it be a law enforcement agency who investigates them? Does the State of California really want to give trade associations the legal right to play at being Secret Squirrel?

[Thanks to our tipster for the tip.]